Hello,I'm planing on using trail cameras to do an experiment on how the population of different animal species change over time. If I do this experiment how many trail cams would give me accurate data? Also, how long should I preform the experiment?Thanks for all your help,Elephant Lover

This sounds like a great project, but not one that would be doable within the time frame of a high school science project. Animal populations do not change rapidly unless something catastrophic happens like a forest fire or hurricane or human-caused environmental change.

Where were you planning to do the animal survey? The location and whether you used some kind of bait would certainly affect how many trail cams you would need to get an accurate sample of animal species. Were you planning to look at only mammals? There are webcams that you can access online to see pictures of animals in the camera's view but i don't know how you could work that into a project that would not take months to do. You also have to take into account normal seasonal variations in population resulting from migration and hibernation.

It also seems as though you would need a lot of equipment, especially the cameras, the conduct such an experiment. It could be very costly to conduct such an experiment, and as Sci B said, animal populations are usually fairly stagnant over time, unless an dramatic event occurs. Also, how would you be able to tell the difference between the different animals of the same species that walk past your cameras, without marking or tagging them in some way? These are just a possible setbacks to consider, but I think this could be a very interesting project if you have enough resources.